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Christine Ma-Kellams
"But I want to live with Dad," I said. The mediator didn't look up. "How long?" I asked. "Your mom's nice," she replied. Mom didn't say a single word on the car ride home, and if silence was my only punishment, I wouldn't be writing and mad today, scraping ice from consciousness and tragedy. Nick and Ben were too busy decapitating their collectively owned Red Power Ranger by shoving his head into the little metal trash-cigarette butt-holder on the curve of the rear car door and closing the lid on it repeatedly. When Red's head proved too big-I understood; I was the one who since birth could never wear crewneck sweaters because the last time I tried to it was like pushing an ostrich through a squirrel vagina-they resorted to tying the middle of my seat belt around his neck and playing tug-o'war with the ends, arhythmatically and gleefully. (One day Ben would find himself hunting Afghan drug lords in their pockmarked homeland as an Army Ranger, and though he never talked about the particulars of what he did when he found said drug lords of interest, I'd always imagine him re-enacting what happened with Red that afternoon in the Chrysler). By the time we got home to the green front door of our apartment, Mom broke her vow of silence. "Boys, when we get inside, I want you to come in my room. I've got a treat for you." Nick stopped tugging at Red's kneecaps and Ben started doing burpees, hands and knees rendezvousing in midair. Even I perked up a little, as the promise of goodies welcomed a sudden onset of amnesia over the day's earlier happenings. As soon as the lock turned, the three of us bolted left for the bedroom, racing because whenever three or more boys are around everything is necessarily a pissing contest. Mom dropped her hobo sack next to the door and strolled in behind us, mindfully as if she were meditating. When she got to the bed, blue and soft and unmade, she reached towards Ben and Nick, who were each leaning against the grainy curved end posts, pulled them in all congenial and Santa-like, and looked at me, blankly. "No, Luc-" I stayed still for a moment, not understanding what crime I had committed between the door jam and bedroom. "-I meant, only the boys I love." * * * They say the Germans created schadenfreude, as if only a country that produced an Adolf or an Addie-not intentionally or volitionally, of course, but still, produced-could know the orgasmic satisfaction that comes from witnessing your enemies suffer, and then managed to create a word for it, and then used that word so damn often in everyday life that it became the equivalent of other feeling words, like "horny" or "delirious" or "awesome." But just because they managed to collectively slap a label on what I dare say is a universal human experience-if not outright goal [1]-doesn't mean nothing. The other day I find out via my friend Juno's [2]Facebook, which found out via Twitter, that I'm the only person left in the lone universe that didn't know what "ratchet" meant, and were it not for my favorite anti-feminist feminist [3] Beyoncé's choicely timed tweet [4], my ignorance would've continued until my thirties, God forbid, which are a generally less-forgiving time than my twenties, or so I'm told. And I quickly find out that thanks to Miley's widely-celebrated breakup and subsequent celebrity crush on all-things-Black-and-therefore-gangster, and my girl Beyoncé, White America now has a household term for describing the most ill of all social labels: the crazy-bitch-who-thinks-she-is-all-that-and-then-some-but-doesn't-realize-that-her-ass-is-fat (and not-in-a-good-way), enough-to-make-Sir-Mix-a-Lot's-dick-limp-and-them-horizontal-stripes-on-that-polyester-mini-don't-help-none. But honey, please, before Obama was Black, before Marilyn was Monroe, before Jesus was the Christ, ratchets have been around, annoying their more noble and depressive-realistic counterparts at water wells with their low-cut tunics and Nile River chatter and one too many false gods adorning her apocalyptic, uncombed hair. They say the Germans created schadenfreude, but I like to think I singlehandedly bring the experience to the forefront of the universe's attention when I see Nick and Ben walk in Dad's front door with their pillowcases, the same ones we used for bedtime and trick-or-treating, stained with wet lashes and melted tootsie rolls and time. They walk in and I know Mom is gone, by will or by accident, if only in the metaphorical sense, which for all intensive purposes, is the only sense that mattered. |
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ISSN 2150-6795 |